💾 Archived View for stack.tilde.cafe › gemlog › 2023-07-09.old.gmi captured on 2023-12-28 at 15:26:47. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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gemini://josias.dev/gemlog/generator.gmi
I've become my own text generator. I've lost my soul and replaced it with a language model.
Are you so sure that you haven't always been a text generator?
I am helping to take care of an older person with memory issues. Also nearly-blind, hard of hearing, a personality disorder, a possible a stroke, and a chemically-induced amnesia that is (possibly) improving. So my experience may not be typical, although entirely fascinating.
My mother-in-law was given large doses of opiates while in care of a rehab facility after experiencing a traumatic injury (a fall and a hip replacement). She was wiped clean, and had no idea who she (or anyone else) was, what year it was, where, why, etc. Her short-term memory was completely shot, and she was (and still is) repeating herself constantly, which is really pretty difficult to deal with.
We were told by rehab staff she would never walk. They were wrong - she got up and walked -- she couldn't remeber not being able to walk! Likewise, she recovered quite a lot of mental abilities. It is criminal that facilities for the elderly routinely drug patients to make it easier to 'care' for them while billing astronomical sums.
Once we broke her out of rehab, my partner managed to replant a lot of memories via story-telling, and much like training a language model, she went from an empty syntax model to something resembling a normal person. But I am pretty sure she is faking it. And then I start thinking that maybe, I am too.
She was very smart and funny, although the entire time I've known her (she is in her mid-nineties) she was quite nutty, with possible dimentia and narcissistic tendencies. For the last decade or more of being on her own she was desperately developing tools for faking competence. I've uncovered numerous pads of paper on which she worked hard to figure out the rent and bills, as her ability to do simple arithmetic became unreliable. Tons of notes to remind herself of certain things.
Not knowing where or when you are is extremely disorienting. Combined with a hearing loss (which disconnects large parts of one's brain) and a vision loss (likewise), in addition to a declining ability to process information, reality is a scary place. Over time she became quite paranoid, convinced that others were plotting to take away her stuff (not worth anyone's efforts, really), destroying her artwork, and otherwise conspiring against her. She would regularly go to the bank and demand funds which she had withdrawn years ago, and accuse them of thievery -- until, eventually, the local branch closed, convincing her that they had absconded with her money and are living it up somewhere... (again, we are talking about life savings of a few thousand, which in her mind had grown into millions).
But, she managed to fake it quite well. At parties she could (and still can!) hold court, telling people that it's nice to see them again, joking around, maintaining smalltalk, and making a wonderful impression. I am certain she had no idea who those people were. Now she is more obvious, because she keeps asking the same questions-- although when pressed she will tell you she couldn't hear you before (not entirely true, as she forgets entire conversations).
Like many people (all?) she is very invested in not admitting her condition. She will concoct elaborate stories to explain away any dead-ends she gets herself into. She will invent memories -- and occasionally come up with real ones, completely confusing us. It is completely impossible to tell where the boundary of reality and simulation lies. As her intelligence is declining, her attempts to fool us (and manipulate us into feeding her information without actually asking questions that would be dead giveaways) are more and more obvious. Needless to say, we generally play along to be kind, and sometimes that encourages more such behavior, as she is realizing that we are not so smart...
Dealing with a borderline person is painful to start with -- reality is flexible in the drama being staged at every moment. Being around one with a deteriorating brain is an agony for me -- and a source of morbid fascination. As I witness attemts to bullshit and manipulate, I start thinking -- am I that different? All the times I've lied my way through situations -- how is it different at all? As I project my personality onto the world around me -- where is the boundary of truth? Are some people aware of my bullshit and are just going along for kicks or kindness? Is there anything real?
As thoughts come into my head, I often stop and trace them backwards in time. I thought it was my own thought, but is it really? Come to think of it, I read something in the Times the other day. Or it was a snippet of a conversation last week. Maybe I read something on Gemini, or a movie I saw as a kid. Do I have any original thoughts or ideas? Does anyone?
And on a larger scale, is it me -- or is something or someone pushing me to do things? Did smoking drive a significant percentage of my actions when I was younger, for instance? Obtaining tobacco products, smoking breaks, conversations with other smokers, even relationships... For some people, it's religion. For others, working on their PhD, perhaps to satisfy a demanding parent -- or some childhood image of themselves...
Richard Dawkins, as part of 'The Selfish Gene', proposed that a self-propagating informational construct may drive people's actions. He dubbed it 'meme' (a term soon corrupted by cat pictures). This idea was further developed by others, and I am convinced of its veracity. I truly believe that a human brain/mind is an empty flowerpot, and various information seeds flying around may firmly plant themselves there, driving action and forming personality. Religion, politics, cults, beliefs, addictions, ideas that make us want to change our lives... Things that make us excited, and things that make us try to convert others to join up. Some good, some bad.
Those, whose pots remain empty, suffer from ennui and depression.
And so I wonder if we really _are_. I am not the first one.